Income Protection Insurance ensures you receive a monthly income if you are unable to work due to illness or injury. It means that while you can't work, you still have money coming in allowing you to maintain your financial stability even though you're not earning.
Why you need it
Every year, more than 50,000 households in New Zealand experience a family member's inability to work for three months or longer. While ACC covers accidents, it may not fully replace your income and offers no support for illnesses.
How it works
Income protection insurance steps in when you need it most, providing you and your family with a monthly payment if you're temporarily unable to work due to an accident, illness, or injury. This ensures that your essential expenses are covered while you focus on recovery.
What's covered
Pinnacle Income Protection Insurance covers you when you can't work due to sickness, accidents, or injuries. When applying, you have the flexibility to choose your cover amount, waiting period, and cover period, ensuring that it aligns with your unique needs.
Want to protect your income?
Get a quote in 30 seconds. Be covered in 10 minutes.
We write everything in plain English so that it's easy to understand with no surprises. We also believe that life cover should be simple, so we make sure you can do it yourself. You can get personalised advice or buy cover, usually in less than 10 minutes, all online without talking to anyone (unless you want to).
Designed for Kiwis
We want every family in Aotearoa to have the choice of getting the protection of life insurance and we want it to be easy. That’s why we designed our cover specifically for Kiwis.
More for less
We know life can get expensive, so we tailor our advice to something you can afford. Because we keep things simple and because we are an online company, it costs us less to run our business. This means we pass the benefits onto you, our customers, by way of lower premiums.
You choose the monthly payment amount that will be right for you, either 60% or 75% of your current average monthly income (before tax) up to a maximum of $12k per month.
You can choose how long you want payments to continue after you've have to stop work - either 6, 12, 24, or 36 months.
You also have a choice on how long you wait for your first payment (either 30, 60 or 90 days) from the time you are unable to work
You have to be aged between 18 and 59 to get a policy. You can apply online if you are aged between 20 an 59 and are a NZ citizen or a NZ permanent resident. If you are outside the online age range please contact us
You need to have been in paid employment for more than 30 hours a week in NZ for the past 2 years; either as an employee or self-employed. You can have changed employers during this time, as long as the gap between employers wasn't more than 30 days.
Depending on your occupation we may need to talk to you before we can give you a quote, and in some cases we can't provide ou with cover at all. Contact us if you can't find your occupation (on the quote page) or if you'd like more information. Be assured however, we can provide cover for most people.
You can add Life Insurance to your Income protection policy
All our policies have a 30 day free look period, so you can buy with confidence
Apply online and you'll recieve 10% off your first year's premiums.
Putting your policy in place
If you have two or more Pinnacle Life policies paid by direct debit from one bank account, the second and subsequent policies will be discounted by $24 per year.
If you are made redundant from your permanent employment while your policy is in place, we'll pay your premiums for up to 6 months while you're looking for another job.
You can choose whether you pay your premiums monthly, half-yearly or annually.
Your premium payments will increase each year as you get older.
Each year your amount of cover will increase to take account of CPI unless you advise us otherwise.
If your income goes up, your level of cover can too. Let us know within 60 days of your increase, and we may be able to give you a proportional increase without additional information. You can apply for an increase at any time.
At any time you can request to change your waiting period and cover period. Give us a call on 0800 22 22 23, and we will help sort out what you need. Depending on what you want to do, you may have to apply and be assessed, or we may be able to give you a new quote that you need to agree.
You can change the beneficiary (the person we pay any claims to) of your policy at any time by completing this form.
Your policy will remain in place until the end of the month in which you turn 65 unless you cancel it before then
When you need to claim
Contact us if you have an injury or illness that means you can't work, and we'll help you through the claim process.
After your waiting period is finished, your first payment will be made on the last day of the month following.
Payments will be offset by any other income you are receiving from paid sick leave, other insurance policies, ACC or any other government agency.
We’ll keep making monthly payments until you reach the end of your chosen claim period or until you return to work (whichever happens first).
Your policy will be reinsured by Hannover Life Re, one of the largest reinsurers of life insurance in the world.
